Hubstaff

Pros

Offers screen-grab and keystroke monitoring.
Easy to add time to timesheets prior to shifts.
Easy to schedule shifts for employees

Cons

No advanced tracking.
Stopwatch requires a second app on the desktop.
No IP address restrictions.
Very basic reporting.

Bottom Line

Hubstaff can do most of what you need to oversee when and how employees are managing their time.
But if you need deep insights that aren't standard for time-tracking services, Hubstaff won't be able to help.

1 Jun 2019

Hubstaff (which begins at $5 per month per user) is much like Editors' Choice-winning TSheets in that both tools focus almost exclusively on time tracking features. Hubstaff splits this focus somewhat by adding some employee monitoring capabilities, such as keystroke monitoring, but for the most part, it's focused on time tracking. Even so, however, it doesn't quite catch up to TSheets in this department because the latter does somewhat better when it comes to more advanced features.

While pure play solutions such as Hubstaff and TSheets appeal to many customers, others often want a broader feature set that might extend to project management (PM), expense management, or invoicing, for example. Tools that fall into this category include Mavenlink and our other time tracking Editors' Choice winner Zoho Projects.

Pricing and Plans

Hubstaff was built to give you Big Brother-level oversight into when employees are working, what they are doing while they work, and what you need to pay them when the work is done. The Basic $5-per-month plan gives you access to simple time tracking tools, an employee payment schedule manager, 24/7 support, and user settings that can be managed on an employee-by-employee basis. Additionally, this plan lets you keep track of whether or not your employees are working by letting you record screenshots while they work as well as monitor keyboard and mouse activity during shifts. Of the tools we tested in the time tracking roundup, Hubstaff and Time Doctor are the only tools that offered this level of insight into how workers are progressing. Although keyboard and screen monitoring are useful (albeit over-reaching) features for a shift monitor, Hubstaff's implementation leaves much to be desired (more on this later).

The $10-per-user-per-month Premium plan includes everything you'll find in the Basic plan, but you'll also get access to Hubstaff's application programming interface (API) to integrate the tool with other third-party software. The Premium package also comes with a lightweight scheduling tool that gives administrators the power to assign shifts and delegate tasks from within the console. Premium customers can also use the tool to create invoices and make PayPal payments automatically. Customers that pay annually will receive two months free (for both price tiers).

Compared with TSheets, its closest competitor in our roundup, Hubstaff is reasonably priced, especially given the added monitoring features that are unavailable in competitive tools. TSheets offers a basic free account, as well as a $5-per-user-per-month account that charges a $20 base fee per month for teams with fewer than 100 users, and an $100 base fee per month for teams with more than 100 users. The base fee, which Hubstaff doesn't charge, makes TSheets slightly more expensive than Hubstaff, even at Hubstaff's Premium level. Hubstaff plans to move away a pricing plan that groups the number of users together in set amounts like 5, 10, and 15 and instead will be more exact with the pricing according to the number of users. For example, a company with 17 users will play for 17 users rather than rounding up the number to the price for 20 users, which is $99 per user per month.

If you're more interested in those bulky project management solutions, then you'll need to pony up a bit more cash. Mavenlink charges $39 per user per month for its cheapest plan that includes time tracking. Zoho offers its cheapest time tracking plan at $20 per month for 10 users and 10 projects (which is a decent deal if you need all of the extra PM features). The cheapest time tracking plan from Wrike costs $24.80 per user per month.

Features and User Interface

Hubstaff's user interface (UI) is designed with an attractive left-rail gray and blue navigation bar that leaves plenty of room on the right-hand side of your screen for data entry and analysis. When you first log in to the system, you'll be taken to the main dashboard, which gives you an overview of how many hours your employees have worked that day and how many hours they've worked over the past seven days. You'll also see a list of each member, their most recent tasks, and how active they've been over the past week. This is a solid project management data visualization that lets you immediately differentiate between workhorses and do-nothings, and it immediately calls to attention projects that are getting more than enough attention and projects that are being neglected.

We invited users to join our account as members for a few of our active email addresses. When added correctly the employees show up as "Members" listed in the admin view. But when we added one user for one of our active email addresses, the user still showed up under Invites but didn't appear under Members. We received an email notification of "Outstanding Invites." Even though we already accepted the invite for one email address, it didn't show up in the system as accepted. We clicked the link in the email, which led to the list of invites. Then we selected Action and Resent Invite. A Hubstaff representative told us that when we accept the invite from our other account, we need to log out of Hubstaff completely and then sign in from the other account. Once we took this step, we were able to successfully add the new member to our account and have that person track time from the separate account.

There are two ways to add time in Hubstaff: You can build manual time sheets with past hours worked, or you can use the stopwatch feature. Previously, Hubstaff only offered the stopwatch feature in its desktop app. Now you can use the stopwatch button in the mobile app, desktop app, or on the website. You add a task to work on and then click the stopwatch arrow button to begin timing your work. To change tasks, click the drop-down menu in the timer widget to switch to a different task. For example for "New railroad tunnel work," we wanted to switch tasks from "Drilling into the bedrock" to "Performing the electrical work." Once we changed the dropdown, the timer stopped. Then we clicked the arrow to begin the stopwatch for the new but related task.

With the time sheet feature, you log your hours as you probably did with pen and paper during the analog era of time tracking. Essentially, you work your shift, you add time to your time sheet, and you sign off on it. This is a pretty standard method of tracking time. Unfortunately, because Hubstaff doesn't let you add future time, you can't use the platform as a shift planner. Administrators can let users manually edit previously submitted time sheets, and they can force users to require a reason to ensure they're actually adding hours they worked. Admins can also remind users to start tracking time if they haven't clocked in to the system in a while.

The native app will take a photo at random intervals of up to three shots per hour depending on how often the admin wants to spy on workers. Screenshots can be partially blurred to not record sensitive information on every grab, but enough of the screen is left unsullied that you'll still get a sense of whether the screen is on work-related or play-related content. This is an annoyingly complicated and convoluted way to manually track time, especially if you're jumping from task to task throughout the day. Hubstaff should find a way to add the screengrab elements to the cloud-based architecture like it did with the stopwatch to simplify ease of use.

The Schedules tab lets you assign dates and times for employees to work. You can set a minimum number of hours to work and a lunch break duration. Hubstaff also lets you set a recurring shift. The tool's reporting software has improved since our last review but still trails that of more robust tools like Zoho Projects. In Hubstaff you'll get access to reports on time worked, percent of activity, and money spent. Since our last review, Hubstaff has added a graphical view of an entire workflow. Soon, Hubstaff plans to add the ability to save filters for a particular search rather than searching for members separately. You can view a report on Time & Activities or reports on Weekly activity, Payments, Amount Owed, Project Budgets, Time Off Balances, Invoices, and more. If your goal is to learn and evolve based on when and how your employees manage time, you'd be better off working with Zoho Projects.

Admins receive notifications when they've reached weekly staffing and budget limits. Invoices are automatically calculated and created based on the time each employee worked, as well as his or her associated pay rate. You can set up automatic payroll through PayPal, which lets you automate payments based on time tracked within the tool. Keep in mind: Users don't have to send time through for approval, so automatic payments will be made whether employees were right or wrong about the number of hours they worked. There is no reminder for managers to double-check each time sheet before automatic payments go out so, if you're worried about making false payments, then you can set PayPal payments to manual.

As part of the configuration settings, you can control who receives alerts about a user, (management, a user, both or no one). We think it's smart that both management and the user would receive this. Meanwhile, when it comes to editing time, Hubstaff allows you to set a reason for editing time. Perhaps this is helpful when companies need to keep records so they don't get audited.

Employee Monitoring

We've touched on how some of Hubstaff's more Big Brother-like features factor into time tracking. But the platform also has many of the hallmarks of employee monitoring tools. Hubstaff's employee monitoring features include keystroke logging, URL and application monitoring, GPS and location monitoring, and activity screenshots.

Once you set your users and they download the timer app onto their machine, the desktop app not only tracks time but will take screenshots randomly or at custom intervals, such as three screenshots per minute. This applies not only to the user's main screen but any attached monitors as well. Hubstaff doesn't log keys, but it does track the activity provided via the mouse and keyboard, giving employers a calculation of how active the employee is. This data all winds up on the Hubstaff dashboard in the Activity tab. This is where you can then select a user from the drop-down menu to see their screenshots correlated with activity data.

When it comes to application and URL monitoring, Hubstaff goes beyond simply tracking time to see what websites and apps employees visited or opened and how long their sessions were. The Reports module can then run custom queries on vectors such as app usage mapped against time and activity. Hubstaff integrates with project and task management tools such as Asana and Trello to filter reports by specific projects or tasks to track productivity.

One unique employee monitoring feature offered is GPS location tracking through Hubstaff's mobile app. While the mobile app itself can't take screenshots (the mobile device can) or capture mobile app and website activity, it lets you track and log location for employees working in the field. While the depth of monitoring data and surveillance features can't measure up to a powerhouse tool such as Teramind, our Editors' Choice for employee monitoring, Hubstaff has a useful selection of features for employers that want a bit more oversight.

Mobile Access

Tracking time in real time on Hubstaff's Android and iOS apps is exactly the same as it is on the desktop app, but the mobile app provides a particularly intuitive interface. The mobile app lets admins monitor movements via GPS tracking. This gives you an overview of how much movement was done by your employee by capturing location data at different stages.

At first we were unable to start the timer for a task because we didn't enable Location Services for Hubstaff. Once we clicked Allow, we were able to begin timing the project SEO Reports for XYZ Stores.

The mobile dashboard in Hubstaff was neatly organized. The interface in the mobile app was pretty good, but you can't view the Reasons column on the time sheet. You should be able to scroll over with the touch screen.

When you click on an item, you can see how much money was spent based on the amount of time worked. On the main dashboard, you can track the amount of time and the cost for both individual members and a team. The mobile interface was close to the quality of TSheets, but the latter platform has a nicely laid out time sheet with each employee separated with rules. We also like the options in the TSheets mobile app as far as Take Break, Clock In, and Clock Out. Hubstaff has a "take a break" feature, but it wasn't visible in our tests.

What's Missing

In late 2018, Hubstaff released some updates that specifically addressed certain feature weaknesses or omissions, including adding a web timer, fleshing out reporting options, and adding activity levels and screen monitoring. Aside from its draconian screengrab and keystroke tracking, Hubstaff doesn't do a very good job allowing for deeper shift oversight like the larger project management tools. For example, Hubstaff doesn't allow advanced tracking. If you run a trucking company and you're less concerned about how many hours a trucker drove than the distance driven, then there's no way to manage that in Hubstaff. Unlike Hubstaff, TSheets gives you the ability to create six additional customizable advanced tracking fields. You can also add a question for every clock-out (i.e., "Was there an incident? Yes. No.") and the system forces the user to respond to the queries at the end of every shift or they won't be able to clock out.

However, Hubstaff is much improved when it comes to reporting features. In the past, you could add notes to an empty text filed, but now these Notes fields do appear in reports. Like most services, you can export the data in CSV or PDF format.

As hardcore as Hubstaff is about tracking work, the tool doesn't allow for IP address restrictions, which means your employees can say they're working from the office but they can actually be working from a cruise ship in the Bahamas (unless they're using the mobile app to track time). This is a standard feature that's available in almost every other tool we tested. Hubstaff also doesn't enable admins to require users to snap a photo when they report to work. We suppose it's overkill to make someone take a selfie right before you start recording their screen and monitoring their keystrokes, but TSheets lets you set this as a requirement (which makes sense, especially if you're tracking tasks done outside of a computer, such as retail, construction, or entertainment work). The software also doesn't let users clock in via a phone call, which is an element services such as TSheets, VeriClock, and Zoho Projects make available for workers who don't have a smartphone.

A Decent Time Tracking Tool With Some Monitoring

Hubstaff is an easy-to-administer, feature-rich, time tracking tool. If you're diligent about monitoring employee behavior while on the clock, then there's no better software available than Hubstaff. You'll be able to log screenshots, track keystroke volume, and route movements via GPS tracking.

Unfortunately, if you're looking for a platform that goes the extra mile to enable customization, atypical data entry, or a more advanced reporting structure, then Hubstaff won't be right for you. Still, although it falls short of TSheets, the much-improved Hubstaff is a solid choice for a platform focusing on time tracking.

Rob was previously an editor at SD Times covering software, managing social media, and writing narrative-driven features on any offbeat story or trend he could find. He graduated from Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications ... See Full Bio